New cars with 19-plates on sale at 40% discount

If you want to pick up a brand new car on the cheap, then now is the time.

Car dealers are tripping over themselves to ditch unused 19-plate vehicles this month, which means buyers could get discounts of up to 40%.

Motor dealerships were forced to pre-register large volumes of zero-mile cars at the end of August due to an emission deadline passing that stipulated that they can no longer be sold as 'new' vehicles.

Now they've got to shift them fast - which is great news for buyers looking to trade in their rust old banger for a newer model.

The WLTP (World Light Vehicle Test Procedure) cycle came into force in September 2018 and is the new standard used for type approval of new vehicles sold across Europe.

Manufacturers were given a 12-month allowance to continue selling a proportion of cars as 'new' that failed to meet the new regulation, which came to a close at the end of August.

This gave dealers no choice but to pre-register remaining stock of these vehicles that would need to be sold as 'nearly new' cars on 19 plates.

Online motor retail specialist, BuyaCar.co.uk, has scoured the market and found some astonishing deals on pre-registered models.

And it's not just stock of diesel models that dealers are trying to move, with the top 10 deals it found offering a mix of oil burners and petrol cars.

In one case the discount on a £76,500 19-plate vehicle with just 11 miles on the clock is £30,500 - representing a saving of around £2,775 per mile.

As well as the emission deadline, dealers have already been struggling to meet sales targets.

And with widespread deals on new models with the latest 69 registration plate introduced this month, retailers have been left with little to no choice but to further slash prices on the pre-registered stock.

'This means savvy car buyers can make savings on some Audi and Volkswagen models of between £10,000 and £30,000, though huge discounts are available across many other popular makes of car,' BuyaCar said.

For example, it found a Citroen C4 SpaceTourer, registered this year on a 19 plate with £9,681 off the retail price.

That’s a discount of over a third (35 per cent) on the original price, working out at nearly £1,000 off for each of the 10 miles on the clock.

Even popular small cars are being cleared out at enormous discounts.

A Fiat 500 1.2 Pop with just one mile on the clock has £3,570 off - a price cut of nearly a third compared with what it should have cost just a few months ago.

And analysts spotted an equally-dinky Citroen C1 1.0 VTi Feel city car with nearly 40 per cent off, with a discount of £4,730 on the original new price of £12,120.

Austin Collins, managing director at BuyaCar.co.uk, said it's not uncommon for nearly new cars to be sold at big discounts but has been 'struck by the offers' on pre-registered cars currently that have barely turned a wheel.

'In several cases, the distances recorded on the clock suggest the car has probably only been driven off the transporter and into the showroom before being moved once or twice around the forecourt,' he told This is Money.

'It’s a cliché that there has never been a better time to buy a new car but when the market is proving as tough for dealers as it is today, the need to clear unsold stock really does lead to amazing bargains.'

Analysts at BuyaCar are also expecting September’s 69 plate to begin appearing on nearly-new pre-registered cars - again with large discounts - even before the month is over.

This is because dealers often rely on the bonuses paid to them by manufacturers for meeting new car registration targets as their main source of profit.

'If September proves to be as difficult a sales month for dealers as the rest of 2019 has been, the pressure to register more cars than they can store is likely to mean another fire sale in the run-up to the end of the year,' the car retail site said.

A review of the market in the first week of September has found that some of these models are being offered to buyers with thousands of pounds knocked off their list price in order to clear them from forecourts.

The WLTP (World Light Vehicle Test Procedure) cycle came into force in September 2018 and is the new standard used for type approval of new vehicles sold across Europe.

Manufacturers were given a 12-month allowance to continue selling a proportion of cars as 'new' that failed to meet the new regulation, which came to a close at the end of August.

This gave dealers no choice but to pre-register remaining stock of these vehicles that would need to be sold as 'nearly new' cars on 19 plates.

Online motor retail specialist, BuyaCar.co.uk, has scoured the market and found some astonishing deals on pre-registered models.

And it's not just stock of diesel models that dealers are trying to move, with the top 10 deals it found offering a mix of oil burners and petrol cars.

In one case the discount on a £76,500 19-plate vehicle with just 11 miles on the clock is £30,500 - representing a saving of around £2,775 per mile.

As well as the emission deadline, dealers have already been struggling to meet sales targets.

And with widespread deals on new models with the latest 69 registration plate introduced this month, retailers have been left with little to no choice but to further slash prices on the pre-registered stock.

'This means savvy car buyers can make savings on some Audi and Volkswagen models of between £10,000 and £30,000, though huge discounts are available across many other popular makes of car,' BuyaCar said.

For example, it found a Citroen C4 SpaceTourer, registered this year on a 19 plate with £9,681 off the retail price.

That’s a discount of over a third (35 per cent) on the original price, working out at nearly £1,000 off for each of the 10 miles on the clock.

Even popular small cars are being cleared out at enormous discounts.

A Fiat 500 1.2 Pop with just one mile on the clock has £3,570 off - a price cut of nearly a third compared with what it should have cost just a few months ago.

And analysts spotted an equally-dinky Citroen C1 1.0 VTi Feel city car with nearly 40 per cent off, with a discount of £4,730 on the original new price of £12,120.

Austin Collins, managing director at BuyaCar.co.uk, said it's not uncommon for nearly new cars to be sold at big discounts but has been 'struck by the offers' on pre-registered cars currently that have barely turned a wheel.

'In several cases, the distances recorded on the clock suggest the car has probably only been driven off the transporter and into the showroom before being moved once or twice around the forecourt,' he told This is Money.

'It’s a cliché that there has never been a better time to buy a new car but when the market is proving as tough for dealers as it is today, the need to clear unsold stock really does lead to amazing bargains.'

Analysts at BuyaCar are also expecting September’s 69 plate to begin appearing on nearly-new pre-registered cars - again with large discounts - even before the month is over.

This is because dealers often rely on the bonuses paid to them by manufacturers for meeting new car registration targets as their main source of profit.

'If September proves to be as difficult a sales month for dealers as the rest of 2019 has been, the pressure to register more cars than they can store is likely to mean another fire sale in the run-up to the end of the year,' the car retail site said.

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